The following examples show how gamespace can become the stage for a social, political and ethical critique: from a nondescript city under the effect of gentrification, to a barren luxury estate and a set of playful and absurd buildings for London. These examples suggest that, rather than allowing architects to indulge Piranesi’s power-hungry ideal, games could work as a means of showing how dysfunctional reality really is.
— Failed Architecture

In her essay Gamespace Urbanism: City-Building Games and Radical Simulations for Failed Architecture, Federica Buzzi looks at a new crop of indie city-planning computer games that promise fresh potential for simulation and exploration of radical urban scenarios — and subsequent social... View full entry

In a throwback to arcade games, Bjarke Ingels' firm BIG has created an Arkanoid version of their website called Arkinoid, where you can earn points by hitting the firm's projects with a black paddle ball:Don't think it will be easy to claim the top score, however: "Ben Devine!" is currently in the... View full entry

Hello Games has created its own periodic table of elements for the universe of No Man’s Sky ... This allows them to generate 1.8 quintillion planets that are all different from one another and built governing the inherent logic set forth. [...]

“It is no longer about designing a final object or a product, but about designing or configuring the system or the process of their formation—the underlying code, algorithm, or procedure that can generate not just one but multiple outcomes.”
— killscreen.com

More from the games chest on Archinect:Art of Intervention: One-to-One #34 with architect Abraham Burickson, founder of the immersive theater company, Odyssey WorksA tour of experiential magical realism games from the Triennale Game CollectionPokémon Go is forcing us to grapple with 'virtual... View full entry

Frank Lloyd Wright, level designer? That’s what artist William Chyr was thinking, from the moment he crossed the threshold at the Robie House...It was a rare IRL architectural excursion, as Chyr has been immersed in building the digital levels of Manifold Garden, his first-person 3D exploration game in which you defy gravity in order to walk up walls, fall through windows, and launch yourself from one side to the other of an infinite stepwell, [while] solving increasingly difficult puzzles.
— Curbed

Alexandra Lange interviews video game designer William Chyr on his upcoming game, “Manifold Garden”, which is due for a January 2017 release on PlayStation 4. “Chyr has slowly incorporated more architectural references,” Lange writes, ”stretching back through the centuries and including... View full entry

The complexities of designing at the scale of a city could take years to enumerate, but with Block'hood, a game where players design neighborhoods in various modes of complexity with over 80 pre-set blocks, it takes only minutes to start encountering these challenges first hand. Developed and... View full entry